


heaven and hell were words to me

by uglyguccislippers (Hyb)



Series: work song (crawl home) [2]
Category: EXO (Band), SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ballet Dancer Kim Jongin | Kai, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Shinee Family, Spy Lee Taemin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:05:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14230944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyb/pseuds/uglyguccislippers
Summary: Taemin takes the long road.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a sequel to "there was a time" and won't make much of any sense on its own.
> 
> playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/1264475943/playlist/1s8DxZ0xdFWN8MjcbIzcKT?si=x4Oz_lSMTWO7s7XA75zMhQ)

_If only you knew how beautiful your mouth is, you would kiss me on the eyes that I might not see you_ \- Yannis Ritsos

 

 

 

In the dwindling days of an unkind year, Taemin leaves Japan under a false name and comes home. It’s Christmas Eve. The city is draped in twinkling lights and flocks of couples are holding hands under starry arches as he passes by behind the tinted windows of an unmarked car.

Headquarters looks innocuous in the dark, blanketed in fresh snow that muffles sound until he can hear the blood beating in his ears. Two curved white wings of unblinking windows, a coldly bright atrium, a domed roof with delusions of grandeur. Six floors are visible from the outside, but three more extend below ground.

In the hazy hour between night and morning, a tired nurse grants him permission to leave medical. Jinki is waiting in the corridor. At the sight of Taemin swaying to bend and tie his shoes one-handed, he hooks him by the elbow and herds him to the elevators over mumbled protests.

Despite the hour a skeleton staff is roaming upstairs with slices of sponge cake wrapped in napkins, but Sub-Basement B is deserted. Apparently it’s frowned on these days to cram paper pushers into poorly ventilated caves with no natural light. The ceiling tiles are stained with water, rust-colored edges mapping out foreign continents, and the ancient vending machines are unplugged with their blind faces turned to the walls. The lounge has long been abandoned for a cramped but sunny kitchen on the third floor, and it’s not hard to guess why. The couches are probably older than Taemin and smell insistently of mildew and cigarettes.

Taemin sleeps there for ten days.

Unconscious the moment his head comes to rest, he never makes out what consolation Jinki is offering and doesn’t care to remember. When he wakes, head swimming in painkiller fog, Minho is slouched in a chair too small for him replaying a soccer match on his phone. Even on Christmas Day, Taemin can’t imagine the extravagance of dispatching senior agents to monitor one person. They won’t admit to watching him like a puppy, of course. Jinki had claimed to be catching up on paperwork where no one would bother him. Minho, never looking up from his phone, mutters something supremely unconvincing about a better signal for his match.

It all sounds like a breach of national security, but he sinks into a black and dreamless sleep anyway, lulled by the muted chatter of Spanish from the phone. He wakes to find his head cushioned by Jonghyun’s thigh and a packet of kimbap waiting on the table. Despite his dry mouth and the acid in his gut he gulps it down, choking only once with Jonghyun’s fretful hand pounding his back. The motion jars his left arm in its sling and his stomach threatens to heave. And so he suffers the coddling, the chaperone. Jonghyun has the good grace to wait outside when at last he slinks up to the gym showers at three in the morning, on what day he no longer knows.

Jonghyun has brought a duffel bag of clean clothes from Taemin's apartment. It startles him to remember that the place exists even when he isn’t there. A corner of the universe that’s meant to belong to him, full of dead plants and tins of Spam. Rifling through the bag, he can read his friend’s unspoken concern with clarity. Soft clothes, enough for an extended stay, his razor, nail scissors. He must look awful, to merit that sort of preparation. He shaves with his back to the mirror.

Kibum is supposed to be in Hong Kong, or he was, but he coasts in toting a bag of produce, a bottle of rice wine, and a single electric burner that rattles ominously when plugged in. Taemin is appalled by his own hunger but scalds his mouth on black bean noodles anyway. He's contemplating how much and how quickly he can drink without a fuss when Kibum takes his silence as an opening.

“It could have happened to anyone,” Kibum says with deceptive lightness, chopsticks prodding the contents of his bowl.

Taemin squeezes his eyes shut until he sees starbursts of red. _Nothing happened_ to _me_ , he doesn't say. _I happened._

 

 

 

Two hundred and five days after Taemin leaves Fukuoka, and twenty-nine days after Kim Jongin arrives in New York, Taemin follows. It’s embarrassingly easy to confirm his new address by dipping into the server at the ballet company, but he won’t follow him home. _Yet_ , he thinks grimly, his resolve a palm tree bowing to a hurricane. Instead, he’s sinking into a darkly upholstered corner booth in a restaurant where an overabundance of steak is served and the air reeks of seared blood.

There are times when forgettable looks would be advantageous in his profession, but he only has the face he was born with and he makes do. In an understated navy suit, his collar unfastened as if having finally removed a necktie after a long day ransoming fortunes, he’s markedly younger than the surrounding clientele but too dapper to invite suspicion.

He can predict when his phone will finally ring, the same unerring internal clock that jolts him into running before he hears footsteps. The number is always blocked, but he knows exactly who it will be.

“Come have lunch with me,” Jonghyun says without preamble. Nothing like his unruffled voice in Taemin’s ear on ops, when just the cadence of his tone can slow Taemin’s pulse and dispel the static from his thoughts. “I ought to invite everyone for your birthday but I’ll let you off the hook just this once. I’m buying, what do you want?”

“I’m not in Seoul.” From his vantage point he can see the stuttering procession of yellow taxi cabs, hundreds of windows above catching the beams of headlights and fracturing them into sparks. Across the street, a bar has opened its tall shutters to the humid night. A cluster of lissome young people are playing pool, another converging on the dart boards.

“You’re not?” Jonghyun answers his own question in a flurry of keystrokes, a considering hum as he likely finds Taemin never boarded his flight back from Toronto. “Ah - why are you in the States? That means it isn’t your birthday yet, don’t think you’re getting out of lunch, how long will you be?” His sentences are overlapping, thoughts leaping beyond words. He’s likely been in his office since dawn, working with his unblinking intensity. “Kibum is sick, we thought you might cover Australia for him.”

“Don’t even joke about Australia,” Taemin tosses back, distracted. Across the street, a man in blue jeans and a faded pink shirt steps into view at the pool table. His posture is artful, contained, even as he bends across the felt and splays his fingers for purchase. His shirt pulls tight across his shoulders. “I am never going to Australia, I want that in writing, they have spiders the size of _cats_ in Australia.” Taemin knows that shirt, how soft the worn cotton feels against skin. He’s _been_ in that shirt and nothing else, writhing across Jongin’s lap with cool fingertips running up his thighs.

“I can’t believe Minho says you punched a shark.”

“Again, that was a reflex and I felt terrible about it, I wish he would stop telling that story.” Jonghyun’s laugh is warm as a caress and he wants to dissolve into it. _Make me forget, please, help me one more time._ “It’s just a little vacation, give me forty-eight hours. Is Kibum really sick?” He hears Jonghyun’s muffled snicker and it’s all the admission he needs.

“Call me when you’re on the way,” Taemin switches to English as a waitress approaches, and hangs up. He offers her a pair of crisply folded American bills and a smile. “My friend may be late. Do you mind if I have a drink to myself for now?” He can’t give up the corner booth at the far edge of the window, after all, not with the view it affords.

Now that he’s arrived, and _seen_ , he’s no more sure what he came to prove than he was when he passed the airport and kept driving. That he could survive this, maybe. Jongin was never a mark, but Taemin ought to be capable of assessing him with the same dispassionate clarity. Yet in the month gone nothing has changed. He wants Jongin’s reverent hands on him, wants his voice hoarse with sleep, his guileless, hiccuping laughter.

Jongin shifts to the side and makes room for another man to squint over the table. The only other Korean at the company, Oh Sehun, the one whose prolific social media networking allowed Taemin to plan this encounter at a safe distance. His face is stoic but he jostles Jongin with an elbow after sinking his shot. They’ve clearly hit it off, as Taemin anticipated they would when conducting his shamefaced research into the company and its members. Predictable, that Jongin would be drawn to someone who can ease the shock of homesickness and doesn’t require laborious English, but certainty does nothing to ease the sour twist of jealousy in his gut.

Yes, Jongin is still reserved, the same breathtakingly shy man Taemin found drinking alone on the beach - but only for now. Given time, that trace of sadness when he thinks no one is watching will fade. In this place he'll lay down roots and bloom into something new, until Taemin's memories are only an echo of the man he used to be.

It’s both ugly and exhilarating to imagine Jongin might be thinking of him, too. If he were a better man, Taemin would wish for him to forget. But he hoards Jongin’s shyness, his wistful looks, because Jongin gave _him_ his heart with both hands.

 

 

 

Kim Jongin is asleep. Taemin stares his fill, close enough for the first time in three years to hear him breathe. His hair is flattened to one side, his cheek smashed into his bicep. Every time he stirs Taemin’s nerves rattle at him like chains, to run, run away. Jongin is dangerous. More dangerous to him than any knife or subtle poison, how he transfixed Taemin with his certainty in the dark, snared him in one careful hand.

When he does wake, feet twitching under the sheets, his bleary gaze finds Taemin like true north. Cautious, he pushes himself up on one arm. If breathing weren’t acutely uncomfortable Taemin would take him down his throat here and now just to avoid the searching look in his eyes.

Whereas the night before Jongin was reactive, dazed, in the light he recovers himself. Having adjusted to the preposterous circumstances, he fusses tenfold over Taemin’s superficial injuries. The bully will hardly let Taemin lift his arms. He doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s not the first or even the fifth time he’s broken bone in the line of duty. But it tugs sweetly at him all the same, this civilian fretting. How Jongin hitches a distressed sound at the back of his throat if Taemin so much as winces. What must it be like, not to think of pain in measures of what can be survived.

Up close, he has the luxury to examine the minute details of Jongin’s apartment. The pictures of Jongin’s sisters and their children, a ceramic bear no larger than a thumbnail sitting in a potted aloe plant, papery dried roses hanging beside the pantry. The dusty soles of Jongin’s bare feet. It’s still painfully early, exhaustion wrapping around his skull like a hand and bearing down, but Jongin is already stretching on the floor. He catches Taemin staring and holds his gaze, bold with certainty. His eyes are molten dark and pleased. Taemin needs to talk about anything but the hunger burning through his chest.

“You need to _use_ your deadbolt.”

“But I always lose the key.” Jongin folds himself in half like creasing a sheet of paper. “At least if I lock myself out this way, I can get in with a credit card instead of bothering the super.”

“Yes,” Taemin hisses, sitting forward as his ribs seize white hot. “I _also_ found it easy to break into your apartment. Use the deadbolt. We’ll get you another one, even. And keep your blinds down, anyone could look in.”

“Did you?” His voice is muffled into his knees, his broad shoulders lax and untroubled.

“How can they make you come in so early to practice when you finish so late?” Easily eleven at night, when the company is performing. Taemin could pretend not to know, but everything is already illuminated. He’s going to wound Jongin when he leaves again; the least he can offer him is the truth.

“They don’t make us.” Jongin stretches his leg up to his head and then hooks his ankle behind his neck, easy as a yawn. Taemin forces a swallow of coffee past his constricted throat. “I like to be the first one in the studio. You said to act normal, this is what I do.”

“Of course you do. Does everyone think you’re a freak of nature?”

“You haven’t met many dancers. We’re all freaks.” Jongin repeats that heinous maneuver with his other leg. “I just need to get it right. I don’t like letting people see my mistakes,” he admits. “In school, everyone thought I picked things up faster, some kind of natural. They didn’t know when I went home I’d only stop practicing to eat and sleep. Even holidays. There’s no such thing as a genius, I think. You just work until you can make it look easy.”

“You love it that much?” Taemin can just picture him, a grave teenager scrutinizing his every gesture in the mirror.

Jongin blinks. “Well I don’t do it because I hate sleep. Sleep is great. Someday I’ll retire and sleep for a year.”

“But you found time to learn that - street dancing,” No point in pretending. He wonders if Jongin will look over his shoulder after this, always half-expecting to find Taemin haunting his shadow.

Jongin hums in consideration, bent over one folded leg and kneading the arch of his foot. “Sehun has been teaching me, yeah. I’m not very good yet. When I got here, I didn’t know anyone outside of the company. Learning something new was better than sitting at home wondering why the guy who said he’d come visit me in New York disappeared in the middle of the night,” he breezes on, despite the knife’s edge of Taemin’s startled inhale. “It’s exciting. He’s putting together a showcase this summer, modern and classical.”

“I saw you.” A hiccup of hesitation, but Jongin waits like a buddha and never blinks. “Last year, I saw you dance at that club in Queens.”

“Oh. Did you like it?” The morning is too young for Jongin’s voice to rub up against him this way, velvet dark and deliberate.

“I don’t know anything about dance,” he hedges. Jongin flies, and Taemin has spent the past decade training to grow roots and keep his footing, to absorb blows like concrete. “When you’re on stage you look untouchable.” Under hot white lights Jongin glows, his expressions regal and operatic, eyes and mouth painted like the prow of a ship.

“And this is different,” Jongin agrees. Uncoils himself like a ribbon and steals Taemin’s mug for a sip of lukewarm coffee. He drags his knuckles up the inside of Taemin’s arm, coming to rest light as a moth against the soft inner flesh of his elbow.

Different is an understatement. Jongin had danced with quicksilver in place of bone, with the sudden violence of a fistfight. His hips, so demurely stiff in the theater, had pistoned with a glossy ease that Taemin knew intimately, his skin snapping hot and tight in recognition. Watching from the dark fringes by the exit, crushed among strangers, he couldn’t breathe. On stage Jongin looks cut from marble, but in the slant of bluish light and shadow he was all scorching eyes and smirks, flicking his chin like a challenge, palming his cock through his clothes.

Taemin held his dignity together by fraying edges for two days, until he was back in Seoul. In his stale and lifeless apartment he rolled onto his belly, rutted into his hand, and came without a sound, hollow and aching. And still he remembered Jongin with his hair plastered to his brow, flushed, holding him by the hip like he was spun glass.

Jongin is still watching him, and Taemin had allowed himself to forget this. How he stares so openly, how Taemin is unmade by it.

“You can touch me now,” Jongin says.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me in the comments if there's anything you really enjoyed, or just drop a kudos to feed my ego. And as always, you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/hyb_jabbers/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/1264475943/playlist/1s8DxZ0xdFWN8MjcbIzcKT?si=x4Oz_lSMTWO7s7XA75zMhQ)

 

Not so long before his twenty-seventh birthday, Taemin is made young for the first time. It comes upon him like a thunderclap, like a fairytale spell.

Once upon a time he was the greenest brat in a fortress full of geniuses and spooks, and he felt downright miniscule next to Minho, who Taemin then suspected ate kittens for breakfast. Which is hysterical, having now seen him bawl over snapshots of his baby nephew picking his nose.

And he was just a naive kid compared to Kibum, who could read a stranger’s life story down to the naughty footnotes from their bitten cuticles and scuffed shoes. But he was never young, and so he doesn’t know to call it by its name. Not so much the hands of time turning backward but stumbling into a foreign country with no signposts to guide him.

The spell, contrary to all the stories, snares him without a magic word or a shower of sparks. Taemin never suspects a thing until it’s too late and the road behind him has vanished.

A man is drinking alone at a bar, an untouched skewer of cherries and pineapple balanced in a coconut shell, and Taemin watches him for an hour. The man is a sorcerer of sorts, but Taemin doesn’t know this at the time. He forgets all about the paper bag of mangoes and fish jerky waiting in his hotel room, though he hasn’t yet discarded the plan to hunker down with a queue of horror films until his scheduled departure. He’s already beamed the contents of a portable hard drive across the ocean to Jonghyun, courtesy of an arms dealer’s accountant. Pleased with himself (even if his assignments have been conspicuously quiet, thanks to Jinki), he thinks nothing of sidling up to the man with every impure intention.

When he was a teenager he thought he would never get enough of sex. Even when the mothers of all the pretty boys in his neighborhood started comparing notes and watching him in the street. It was better than chocolate, better than cigarettes. His present dry spell is unprecedented. In Fukuoka he was too busy with surveillance and endless reports - subject is eating the spicy pork ramen even though his wife says it gives him the runs, subject late to meeting as result, no data on whether said runs affect bribery of local law enforcement.

And since his return. Well. His appetite is less than it once was.

Yet desire floods back fresh and inviting, because the man at the bar looks ripe as a plum. Taemin could blame his thighs, splayed invitingly wide on the stool, or his soft mouth, or just the way his white shirt gapes down the back of his neck, skin shimmering in the heat. He’s striking to look at, but so is most everyone Taemin knows. Every one of the high-functioning disasters he calls his brothers are handsome. But the thing that hooks him, like a hound on a scent, is how nakedly he wears his melancholy. The way his glassy eyes are cast out the open side of the bar spilling to the sand and waves beyond. How he scrubs a hand over his face and comes away flushed like he might cry.

His name is Jongin, and when Taemin curls a hand over his knee he already knows the answer to all of his questions will be _yes_.

None of this explains the moment the plan is detonated. When the sun melts beyond the horizon and he’s sitting beside a crackling fire with sand creeping between his toes. He’s watching Jongin laugh with his entire body at a story Taemin half-fabricated, shading in the nasty bits with colorful details instead.

Except somehow amid all the contortions of truth he finds himself telling him about when he was six, maybe seven, and he found a mouse by the back steps. How it was motionless but still warm in the blinding summer sun, whole and unblemished from its papery ears to its wisp of a tail. How he convinced himself it could be alive, only sleeping, and he would be the one to protect it. Taemin made a nest for it under his bed from a hand towel and fistfuls of grass and wild violets, and it stayed there for two days before his horrified mother found it and chucked it in the bin. It’s meant to be a story about the dumb things they did as children, like Jongin’s blockading his closet door against monsters.

“That’s not stupid.” Jongin’s brows are pinched together. “That was kind.”

Jongin’s little finger grazes his in shadow, searching, and Taemin thinks _oh no_. Something in his chest pops like a cork, singing weightless all the way up to the crown of his head.

 

 

 

Taemin doesn’t have to test how much he might touch Jongin, granted the opportunity, because Jongin is too infatuated with his bloodthirsty schedule and the clock is ticking.

Like the island, he’s wearing Jongin’s clothes again. Track pants that slump on his hips and a denim jacket with pockets to stuff and hide his scabbed knuckles. Jongin doctored up his bruises as well as he could with the remnants from a pan of foundation. The phantom tapping of his fingertips lingers, moth’s wings against his skin. Along his hairline, under his eyes, stringing together an unseen constellation. Jongin wears a massive tweed blazer and a black turtleneck, with his plush mouth and tumbled hair, and Taemin wants to bite the hinge of his jaw like an animal.

“Would you just,” Taemin huffs, “would you come here?” And Jongin bounces over, shoveling his way through a bowl of berries and suspicious glop he called a chia pudding. Taemin kneels and lifts one of his legs by the ankle. Jongin compensates effortlessly, shifting onto his left foot and watching him with mild inquiry.

“I need you to take this seriously. If I ever tell you to run, don’t ask questions. Run. Please. Don’t just shove these on, be ready.” He works a fingertip under the crease where Jongin has crushed the back of his shoe with ill use, until the canvas stands upright and he can hook it over his heel. Jongin lifts his other foot unbidden for the same maneuver. Taemin lingers on his knees, thumb circling Jongin’s ankle, until fingers card through his hair and tilt his face upward.

“Leaving aside the part where I’m still mad at you,” Jongin says, too gentle. “I’m happy you’re _here_. More than happy. So I swear I believe you.” He shrugs. “But how can I worry when I have my very own secret agent looking out for me?”

Taemin is still waiting for the day when the sight of Jongin will stop doing this to him. When he says things like that, and smiles, and the whole world collapses to a pinprick of incandescent meaning.

“You’re thinking too loud again.” Jongin tweaks his nose and has the audacity to laugh at him. “Go back to flirting with me like you were last night so I can enjoy it properly.”

“I was bluffing,” Taemin admits. He’s fighting a grin, and that’s dangerous. “Sometimes you have to keep people talking so they react. The reactions keep you in the loop on their mental state. Like whether you were going to call the police and make me run down your fire escape naked.”

“This is so educational,” Jongin nods gravely. His thumb swipes over Taemin’s lip as he pulls away. Daring. “I’ll be sure to take notes.”

Three years Taemin has been denied the sound of Jongin’s voice in all but hazy clips, and he’ll answer nearly anything to keep him talking. Jongin exploits this discovery with verve and vigor.

“So how did you get to be an _actuary_?” Jongin asks in the street, all but winking. He slings an arm over Taemin’s shoulders without an ounce of hesitation. Taemin is already detecting potential flaws in his plan to introduce himself as Jongin’s cousin the tourist.

“Well I was in a top secret _actuary_ training program,” Taemin says. “And I killed all the other potential _actuaries_ so they had to promote me by default. The end.”

“See if I try and help you out with any code words,” Jongin pouts, unconvincing. “Seriously. Were you in the army?”

“Not for long.” Taemin hurries him down the stairs to the train, and in the crush of humanity twists his way out of an answer.

Back then, he was eighteen and scrawny with nowhere to be, so anywhere was fine, somewhere would do, and he enlisted without looking back. His aptitude tests were proficient but not the best, and to this day he doesn’t know what an officer recognized in him to yank him from the pack. What about him betrayed that he was a better weapon than a soldier.

Not that they were mistaken. In his experience, training in fancy disciplines with foreign names means less than keen reflexes and a willingness to inflict pain. So he drew a lucky hand, because he’s always been fast. The senior agents all have lofty qualifications but Taemin strikes like a viper, and Minho and Kibum are the only ones crazy enough to spar with him for fun.

 

 

 

They are indeed the first to arrive at the studio. Taemin stops in the dim hall and points at one of many framed photos. An etched brass plate reads _1949_. The dancers are all stern-eyed women in stiff tulle skirts. “Now why haven’t I ever seen you wearing one of these?”

Jongin doesn’t bat an eye. “Because it would ruin your view of my ass in tights. But if cross-dressing is what you’re into, I’ll try anything once.”

“Think I’ve had my fill. Had to pose as a call girl once,” Taemin explains, and nothing more, despite Jongin’s sputter of disbelief.

In the empty studio Taemin taps out his third “all clear” message in as many days into his phone, a code that within their circle translates roughly to “I’m not dead, keep out, wait for further intelligence”. After the mess in Toronto, Jinki must be livid at his radio silence.

Jongin is peeling out of his layers despite the chill, surrounded by mirrors so that Taemin is watching him in triplicate. The white shirt he wears beneath is split down the sides and every time he twists his ribs leap against his skin in stark relief like cathedral arches. There’s so little softness to Jongin beneath the surface. She was the same way, a chiffon blouse or red lipstick hiding a vicious left hook and a depraved sense of humor. But Taemin tries not to think of her when he’s sober.

“So you won’t even tell me who I should be worried about,” Jongin ventures, pausing with a hand on the barre. Taemin has surrendered to the view and sits beneath the windows to stare at him. “Even though you’re scared enough to come all the way here. And you’re hurt.”

“I’ve had worse.” It’s the wrong thing to say, and Jongin flashes him a tight scowl in the mirror. “I don’t think the finer points of boryokudan money laundering are going to be of much help to you. Yakuza,” he clarifies. “Doesn’t matter who you are, everybody has to move their money.”

“Pretty sure you told me you worked behind a computer,” Jongin says.

Taemin bites his cheek. “Cyber intelligence is part of the job. I may have exaggerated its role. A bit.”

“So you lied again.” Jongin eats up the space between them in long strides and sinks down. Sleek, unhurried, like he’s the jungle cat and Taemin never had any chance of running away. “Did you even mean to?”

“I lie all the time,” Taemin agrees past the lump in his throat. “I’m actually fluent in Japanese. And I never had a dog.”

“For a spy, you sure give it away easy. It’s all over your face.”

All it takes is one hand hooking Taemin by the ankle and he’s dragged smoothly across the floor and into Jongin’s lap. Jongin is like this, at the very best of times. Insistent. Overwhelming. He palms the back of Taemin’s thigh and braces his spine with a splayed hand. When he bumps his nose up against Taemin’s pulse he groans, pleased.

“I forgot how you smell.”

Taemin can see his own eyes shining over Jongin’s shoulder in the mirrors. The way his lips part when Jongin bites his ear.

“You’re distracting me,” Jongin hums. “And I can’t do anything about it, because I want you to get better. But you look at me _like that_ and all I can think about are the noises you’d only make when I was inside of you.”

This is where they are when Oh Sehun flips on the lights and freezes: tangled in the floor with lips swollen red as cherries and Jongin’s hands all over his ass. Taemin introduces himself before Jongin can stumble over his false name and yeah, any chance of passing for cousins is right out the window. So it goes. Jinki always says plans change, and wise men change with them.

Again and again Taemin has to be explained to the curious dancers filing through the door in ones and twos. Jongin’s voice takes on a certain lilt when he says “friend” and it must be intentional, after three years his English is fluid and comfortable. A pair of girls lean their shining heads together and whisper in Russian, amused. Sehun is still blank with scandalized disbelief.

Then Jongin goes and offers to send his guest outside if anyone finds him _distracting_ , and Taemin glares a hard refusal before he can stop himself.

Yixing is the last to arrive, balancing three trays of coffee in paper cups. In wire-rimmed glasses and a cashmere sweater the color of vanilla ice cream melting he looks sleek. Cultured. Expensive, like his English boarding school and his childhood summers in the south of France. Zhang Yixing, the company’s prodigy artistic director, young and overburdened with talent. Taemin knows too much about him, just like the rest. For years, after all, he’s confined his prying to the people who surround Jongin, seeping along the edges of their sunny lives like ink.

Jongin’s fingers tangle with Taemin’s and linger there. Yixing blinks between them, tilts his head - and says nothing. Only repeats Taemin's name like a question when they're introduced, and Jongin's ears redden. Sometimes, from the corner of his sight, he thinks Yixing is watching him with the wary benevolence one extends stray cats who slip indoors.

They rehearse for hours, throwing out phrases in French like white noise. Jongin is too obvious by half. Only morning, and yet every time he snares Taemin’s eyes in the mirror his jaw tightens with impatience. He might as well curl a hand between Taemin’s thighs, for the look on his face. Jongin, who grew up in a hanok mansion with maids and a courtyard lush with fruit trees. Taemin can’t understand where all this hunger comes from.

 

 

 

“Did Yixing give you the roses?” Taemin prods the contents of the skillet with a wooden spoon as he was instructed. So long as he stays close to crackling hot oil, he might just keep his hands off Jongin a while longer.

Jongin blinks, turning his head to look as if he had forgotten them. “He did, actually. It was kind of a joke.” Warm, his voice is warm. It’s a good memory. “He had them ready after my first show as a principal. Girls usually get the flowers, you know.”

“Sounds like a good friend.” Taemin presses down on the sizzling meat until it hisses. “You rich boys stick together, huh?”

Jongin sighs through his nose. With damning patience, he reaches past Taemin’s elbow and flicks off the stove. “Why don’t you just ask me if we slept together?”

“Past tense?” Taemin is a professional. There’s no excuse for the transparency in his voice.

Jongin snorts. “Well it is now.” His lips find the nape of Taemin’s neck and shape words against his skin. Taemin should have remembered he could weave spells this way. “It was just a friendly thing, once in a while. If it bothers you so much,” he says, breath hot, “you’ll have to stick around.”

Impulsive, Taemin spins and jerks his collar down, pressing a hard kiss to the plane of his sternum. The narrow bridge of armor shielding his heart. Jongin’s lips are parted. In the quiet, the wind lashes rain against the windows. It sounds like waves.

The rapping at the door jolts him in his skin. For an instant, Taemin’s keen reflexes abandon him. He’s useless, a block of wood, and Jongin is stepping away, Taemin has to jerk him back by his waistband.

“Don’t-”

The rapping repeats. “Jongin?” The voice is thin, foreign.

Jongin releases a gusty breath and pries Taemin’s fingers off him. “That’s Mrs. Kowalski. Not a hitman.”

Mrs. Kowalski wears three sweaters and housecoat but even Taemin is forced to admit her chances of hiding a weapon are slim. Between knotted, blue-veined hands she has a covered dish for Jongin that smells ferociously of cabbage. She pinches Jongin’s cheek. Taemin wants to crawl under the floor like a rat.

“I change light bulbs for her sometimes,” Jongin shrugs as he locks the door behind her, even the deadbolt. His ears are pink. But Taemin says nothing, and he misinterprets the silence.

“Taemin. I don’t want to talk about Yixing. And I don’t really want to know about the people you’ve slept with, either.”

Taemin bites his cheek. “The past few years haven’t been so busy for me,” he says carefully.

Jongin doesn’t blink. Taemin can’t even see him breathing. Maybe it’s all the cabbage. “You’re serious.” Maybe not. Jongin drops the dish too quickly, glass ringing on the coffee table, and hesitates with his hands an inch from curling over Taemin’s biceps. “All this time? Holy shit,” he breathes. Something softens behind his eyes and there are his hands, warm all the way through Taemin’s borrowed shirt. “For a creepy guy you’re sort of romantic, you know that?”

“Stop that.” This would be easier if he didn’t have to look at him, at the fragile ladder of his ribs through that fucking shirt. “I’m not a good person. I can’t be anything to you.”

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” Jongin snaps, but his voice is level. Unyielding. “My parents are good people. Everything I have I owe to them, do you want a list? But they had no trouble letting me go.” The stutter in his breath vanishes when he turns his face against Taemin’s neck.

“They didn’t need me.” He kisses his pulse and the skin blooms with heat. “You need me.”

Taemin shoves a hand between Jongin’s legs to _shut him up_ and he grunts, spine curving. But he only scrapes his teeth over Taemin’s jaw and laughs. Soft, with no humour in it. How do you break a spell? Taemin never learned. “You keep saying you can’t stay but you never left. What’s next, nice? I’m sick of words that don’t mean anything. Good people, nice people. They do terrible things every day.”

Jongin draws back to look him in the eye and Taemin drowns.

“My phone is ringing,” Taemin croaks.

Intuition be damned, it’s Jinki who bites out a string of relieved curses when Taemin answers.

“Where’s Jonghyun?”

“Where are _you_?” Jinki snaps back without missing a beat.

“New York.” Jongin’s hand is tucked up the back of his shirt, trailing heat up the notches of his spine. “I fucked up. In Toronto. You saw the report.”

“I’ve seen more detailed reports written on cocktail napkins,” Jinki says sourly. The faint background noise lessens as if he’s stepped into a smaller room. “This isn’t like you.”

The words are too small. _I fucked up_ , he thinks he says. _There’s someone I have to protect._ Across an ocean, Jinki listens. Behind him, so does Jongin. Their breath falls into a shared rhythm. One, two, three, four.

“I wish you would’ve told me sooner, kid.” Jinki sighs. Times like this, he sounds twice his age. “You’re on classified recon until I say otherwise. No paper trail. Do me a favor?”

Taemin grunts an affirmative.

“Be careful.” Taemin can picture him in his office, dark and old-fashioned as befitted its former occupant. That useless glass paperweight on his desk, the one in the shape of the world, as if Jinki isn’t already carrying the whole damn thing on his shoulders. “Try to remember there are people here who love you more than you love yourself.”

Taemin’s eyes are burning. He shudders out an exhale and glares at the ceiling until the film over his vision clears. “Is Jonghyun around?”

A conspicuous pause. “Yeah, about that.” Jinki clears his throat. “You really should have called sooner.”

A staccato knocking rattles the door and this time it’s Jongin who leaps in his skin. It sounds nothing like Mrs. Kowalski's arthritic tapping. Taemin cracks the door with a kitchen knife behind his back and his heart lodged in his throat.

Jonghyun pulls down his traveling mask and emits a single martyred sigh. Rainwater drips from his hair to his overcoat. In one hand he carries a suitcase like a glossy black beetle. Too easily, he elbows through the doorway and yanks Taemin into a damp, crooked hug.

“Idiot,” he says thickly. Then he looks past Taemin’s shoulder and sighs again, crisp.

“You must be the boy.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me in the comments or find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/hyb_jabbers/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/1264475943/playlist/1s8DxZ0xdFWN8MjcbIzcKT?si=x4Oz_lSMTWO7s7XA75zMhQ)

 

After two years and change, Taemin thought his secret was untouchable. It was woven into his life and he took it for granted. Perfectly routine. He would go on flickering through foreign cities like a ghost, he would steal and break bone. He would retreat to the echoing comfort of the basement while his own apartment gathered dust. And he would never tell a soul about Jongin.

Hubris. He thought he could control himself, spy on Jongin’s friends and piece together his life from stolen glimpses. See what snacks from home he missed enough to order online. See the bank deposits he refused from his parents, until they stopped coming altogether.

Two years, and in the fall Jongin hurts himself. Taemin doesn’t even find out until he’s tucked away in the basement with a cup of ramen and ice on his swollen knee.

A torn ligament in Jongin’s ankle, he reads, jumping feverishly between email threads he has no right to see. A fractured bone. The surgery will knock him out for the rest of the season. It’s been three days, and no sixth sense warned him that Jongin was in pain. Rationally, Taemin knows what the human body can endure. But when Jonghyun appears behind the sofa and lays a concerned hand on his shoulder, Taemin chokes on a sob.

Under the rattling lights, he unravels his secrets like knots. About a week of lies, and talking to a stranger like they had all the time in the world. Like they had always known each other, and had finally arrived at the same destination. How Jongin, so breakable, put himself in Taemin’s hands without hesitation.

He tells him about New York. How Jongin helps his elderly neighbors with the rooftop garden, planting cucumber and tomatoes in five gallon buckets like he isn’t trembling with exhaustion from performing the night before. How he feeds the birds on his kitchen sill, fat pigeons gorging themselves on seeds while Jongin pulls faces at them through the glass. How maybe Jongin has already healed from their time together. Maybe he doesn’t ache the way Taemin does now. Maybe Taemin is the only one who spent two years mourning the man Jongin allowed him to be.

Maybe it doesn’t matter how he feels. Not when Jongin is hurt and Taemin is useless. Jonghyun strokes his hair and lets him cry. It doesn’t fix a thing.

 

 

 

The universe always punishes arrogance. Tallies are kept in neat columns and all debts are balanced in the end.

When rehearsal ended Jongin was the first to scramble for his clothes, still throwing glances at Taemin that crackled with heat. A few of his friends had teased him about his hurry, not staying behind to practice more like always. Yixing had paused in his conversation beside the piano, poised in silent inquiry. Jongin began to shove his tennis shoes on, then cursed and knelt to tie them properly. Taemin met Yixing’s eyes for a heartbeat and laced fingers with Jongin to tug him out the door.

Yixing was handsome, wealthy. Donated an outlandish portion of his own income to charity and Taemin had the tax returns to prove it. But Taemin had Jongin for just a little while longer, and unearned satisfaction lit a fire in his chest.

Usually his debts wait a while to come calling. But here’s Jonghyun, his coat dripping on the floor. He sniffs the air and perks up. “Is there food? I smell food.” And he stands at the stove eating chicken and bell peppers straight from the skillet, pausing only to indiscriminately spear forkfuls of cabbage from Mrs. Kowalski’s casserole dish when Jongin holds it out.

“He doesn’t eat on planes,” Taemin explains in the face of Jongin’s shock. “Paranoid.”

“Pragmatic,” Jonghyun says with his mouth full. “I will not be felled by a pack of peanuts and cyanide.”

“We’re all kind of paranoid,” Taemin admits.

“Right. Sure.” Jongin is admirably composed, but his eyes are round as coins. “How many people are going to show up at my door tonight?”

“Just me, lucky you.” Jonghyun waves his fork. “This is not an officially sanctioned trip. As far as the record will show, I’m in Hong Kong on a personal matter and available remotely in case of emergencies. Jinki is fielding the rest.” He fills a glass of water at the tap and drains it without pausing for air.

“You didn’t even have his name.” Taemin follows him into the living room. Shock is like this. It turns your knees to water and you say dumb shit. “I didn’t even tell you he was Korean.”

“I narrowed my search to male dancers who transferred to major companies in New York three years ago and picked the prettiest.” Jonghyun rakes Jongin with his gaze again, then cracks a grin. “You’re a Capricorn. Blood type A, youngest of three, can’t drive. Twice a week you order pad thai despite your diet, how am I doing?”

“He’s showing off,” Taemin says. “Don’t encourage him.”

“You two actually favor each other, if you squint.” Jonghyun has abandoned his suitcase in the middle of the floor. He sinks into the sofa and withdraws a wafer thin laptop from his shoulder bag. “There’s some data to suggest humans are drawn to that sort of resemblance.”

 _Humans?_ Jongin mouths from across the room. But then he blinks twice, and takes an abortive step toward Jonghyun to stare. “Are you— Jjong?”

Taemin told stories on the beach. Most of them were lies. “That was three _years_ ago,” he hisses between his teeth, scandalized. Jonghyun is incandescent with startled delight.

“From your fake job.” Jongin nods once to himself. “Him, and your friend who knows all the girl group dances, and the one you said you used to be afraid of?”

“I didn’t tell you all of that,” Taemin says. He’s sure.

“Yeah, you did.” Something flat and warning passes behind Jongin’s eyes, and Taemin feels the weight of three years like cinder blocks tied to his ankles. “You said you didn’t have much family, but your friends were like your big brothers.”

“We raised him from an egg,” Jonghyun says, gleeful. “I fed him with an eyedropper like a little baby bird.”

“I hate you.” Taemin buries his head in his hands. He sits down anyway and slumps into Jonghyun’s side. “I was nineteen, not a _fetus_.”

“Tiny baby bird with a buzzcut,” Jonghyun croons. “So small. So angry. So ready to fight. Jongin, why don’t you make yourself comfortable. We’re going to have a crack at this mess like rational people and determine whether Taeminnie’s fears are legitimate.”

“They had my name,” Taemin says. “They were waiting for me.”

Jongin hesitates, then turns and makes up two more plates in the kitchen. He hands one across the coffee table and Taemin squeezes his wrist before taking it.

“So what were you doing up there?” Jongin asks.

“I’m afraid that’s classified,” Jonghyun interjects brightly. “Loose lips sink ships.”

“Oh— should I go?”

“ _No_ ,” Taemin says. His voice is too loud.

“I meant to the kitchen,” Jongin says. “I could wear headphones. Or something.”

Jonghyun is staring at Jongin like a present with a shiny silver bow. “He’s _adorable_.”

They determine that Jongin can stay, since Taemin’s foremost responsibility is to sketch out his prior comings and goings.

“If I find that you were sloppy enough for someone to pick up your trail, we’ll handle this accordingly. But that’s not like you.” Jonghyun is trying to be kind. Taemin snorts, shame creeping hot up the back of his neck. “You were made. You’re worried about proximity and endangerment. I’ll humor you. We’ll reconstruct your timeline, and I’ll be your boogieman. I’ll tell you if I think they could trace you back to him. That’s what you need to know, right?”

“Right,” Taemin agrees. He feels lightheaded.

“So why don’t we start with July, three years ago? Your twenty-seventh birthday.” That was unnecessary. Jongin is looking at him now, frozen with a raised fork.

“I had a drink and flew back to Seoul that night. I caught a nonstop flight from JFK.”

“You were here that soon?” Jongin sounds winded, distant.

“Jongin went out for drinks with some of the other dancers from the company. I was across the street. We were never in the same place at the same time,” Taemin says as if convincing himself. As if that were enough, when fear brought him all the way here with his heels on fire.

“How many times, what are we looking at here?” Jonghyun’s fingers are flying across the keys too quickly to follow. “I know your schedule well enough to guess, but better if we don’t take any chances.”

“Four, maybe fives times a year.” Taemin scrapes his hair back with an unsteady hand and doesn’t look at Jongin. “Remote surveillance, mostly.”

“What does that mean?” Jongin’s voice is unreadable.

“I never tapped your phone, I never bugged your apartment, no cameras.” The air is leaving him all at once. “But your friends take pictures. Their whole lives are online.”

“Not yours,” Jonghyun tells Jongin kindly. “No social media.” It sounds like a compliment and coming from him, it is.

Mapping it all out eats up the hours. Unbidden, Jongin makes them all tea, and Jonghyun pats his arm like a father would. Taemin can’t look at him. He watches Jongin’s bare feet on the floor instead. When Jonghyun finally cracks his knuckles and calls it a night, he could weep with relief.

Jonghyun is in the shower, the running water indistinguishable from the rain outside. At the window, Taemin squints through the dark and the wet to find the vacant office across the street where he once watched Jongin. The floor had been littered with shredded documents and empty bags of crisps. Someone had scrawled up the wall in red marker but the only word he could read was _please_. Jongin brought home a date that night and cooked him dinner, and Taemin slept on a floor so cold the pins in his wrist throbbed.

Jongin telegraphs his approach. A creaking floorboard, a steady exhale, before he hooks his chin over Taemin’s shoulder. “Don’t you get it?” His breath stirs Taemin’s hair. He waits, and kisses the thin skin behind his ear. “It was the same for me. I would have followed you, if I knew how.”

 

 

 

Jonghyun has been awake for two days (no sleeping on planes, Taemin explains, _sotto voce_ ) and collapses into Jongin’s bed after no fewer than six rapidfire calls back to the agency. He never says _hello_ or _goodbye_ and Taemin loves him so much his bones ache.

With Jongin he engages in a whispered fit over who will take the couch. A truce is reached, like this: Taemin draped in a sheet at the edge of the sofa with Jongin curled warm and alive behind him. Their breath falls into sync. The sound of waves, again. It follows him everywhere.

“Does your family know what you do?” Jongin asks in the dark. His arm is draped low on Taemin’s hips, careful of his ribs. Taemin can smell the mint of his toothpaste when he speaks. “You said your parents were teachers.”

“My mom’s a nurse.” It was a stupid thing to lie about, anyway. “I send money, sometimes. We don’t talk so much.” Not since he came home from Japan, and couldn’t stand to look her in the eye. He can hear the question Jongin is too kind to ask. “My dad wasn’t around.” Just hazy memories he might have dreamed. A large hand on his shoulder, shiny black shoes. Meaningless fragments like clipped edges of photographs.

Taemin jolts at the sound of snapping bone, heart in his throat. No—it’s only a door slamming across the hall. He tastes blood. Belatedly, the inside of his cheek begins to sting.

“What did you mean when you said people like you?” Jongin’s breath is warm over his nape. “That was your reason. For staying away. For trying to leave again.” His fingertips dig into Taemin’s hip until he shudders and relaxes.

Taemin knows all the words. He knows this scene and how it goes. The villain always has a monologue.

“Before I met you, I was stationed in Japan. For a year.”

It was just the kind of independent operation he had been craving, unsubtly hinting at. Just Taemin and a Japanese agent making and executing their own plans, the very picture of inter-agency cooperation. He came in uptight and overager to prove himself. She knocked him down a peg or five and got him hooked on her menthol cigarettes. Taemin thought, had he been that sort of man, he would have fallen in love.

Fukuoka was a mess of splinter cells, protection money, gun runners, scared girls from Thailand and the Philippines being smuggled in boats with hollow bottoms. But he was only supposed to concern himself with the guns, insomuch as those guns were being moved into Korea. Mission parameters.

It was bullshit. This was when they became friends: sitting up bitching and smoking, drinking her whiskey. She was like a cowboy, he liked to say, and she would snort but smile at him, too. Listening to snores and silence as the occupants of bugged houses slept, they drank and ranted with treasonous honesty. She told him once that he wasn’t completely useless, for a man, and he was so delighted he smacked a wet kiss against her cheek. Of course she shoved him off the desk they were sitting on, but the warmth lingered. Taemin had never worked so closely with someone who didn’t treat him like a kid brother.

“The local syndicate, the big fish, they’re real pieces of work. Militant. Love hand grenades. Turns out they got their hooks in her when she was just a kid,” Taemin says, toneless. He feels the moment Jongin stops breathing behind him. “Her mom was sick, couldn’t begin to pay the bills. She died anyway, but then there was her little sister to worry about, and all that debt. They love debt. Means they own you forever. Not that she ever told me. There are reports, I’ve read them all.”

Jongin disentangles himself. On unsteady legs, he finds purchase on the floor and sinks to look Taemin in the eye. Taemin can’t move, he finds. His limbs are leaden.

“Her contact was sloppy.” Taemin’s throat tightens. She never would have been so careless. In a year, he never saw her slip. Jongin stifles a wounded noise of realization and that breaks the spell. Taemin shoves himself upright too quickly and his ribs scream. Good.

“Real fights happen fast.” Fear does funny things to a person. She could have run, he thinks, but she didn’t. “If you’re unarmed and someone has a gun on you, you can’t screw around. We train for that. Close quarters, you get the gun and you shoot them. And I did.”

“Taemin—” Jongin’s voice breaks. He sounds like he’s going to cry.

“She was my friend,” Taemin talks over him. “And I didn’t hesitate.” His breath is coming in shallow bursts like punctures. “For the one second when it counted, she was my enemy, and I didn’t hesitate. That’s who I am. I killed my friend.” And someone had to tell her sister. The words won’t come. There’s no air in his lungs.

Jongin pins Taemin down by the knees before he can stand. His mouth opens and closes soundlessly. His cheeks are silver wet. Adrenaline tremors shake Taemin from his hands down to the soles of his feet.

“You were hurt, too.” Jongin says. Taemin flinches, rebuttal on his tongue. “I can see you hurting. Do you want me to blame you because you didn’t let yourself die?” There’s steel in him now. He sits up on his knees and grips Taemin’s shoulders before he can pull away.

“I didn’t hesitate,” Taemin repeats thinly. Outside, the wind wails. “I don’t know how you think a person like that could ever love you.”

 

 

 

Taemin won’t talk and Jongin sleeps on the floor. In the morning, Jonghyun wears a bland mask and fills up the silence with pleasantries that require minimal input from either of them.

The ride on the train is tense, and so Taemin isn’t prepared when Jongin kisses him soundly at the studio doors. Firm, with his hands on Taemin’s biceps, pressing heat into his mouth. Taemin finds Yixing watching in the mirrors again. He looks tired and preoccupied, a touch disheveled, and Taemin can’t help but like him better for it. He’ll be good for Jongin. He had better be.

He and Jonghyun make camp outside a coffee shop across the street, chilly in the blue shadow of the buildings. Taemin scalds the roof of his mouth on a triple espresso. Between the tint of the glass and the early morning glare, he can only see the barest flash of movement through the studio windows up on the third floor.

“I can see why he makes you nervous.” Jonghyun swallows half a cranberry scone in one bite. “Too good to be true?”

“If you stay with him, I can fix things in Toronto,” Taemin says. “I just need to know which of them are working under the table for the Kudo-kai. That has to be how they got my name.” From her, from a year spent feeding all their intel back to the source. “I’ll handle it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Jonghyun sucks up more milky tea through a straw. “Kibum volunteered. He should have arrived—” he checks his watch. “A few hours ago. Minho wanted to help, but he has loose ends in Singapore.”

Taemin bristles. “I don’t need anyone else cleaning up my mess.”

“Try and stop us,” Jonghyun says, mild. He makes gooey eyes at a poodle jogging with its owner. “Besides. I needed you here for a talk. About your boy.”

Taemin recoils. “Please tell me it’s not a sex talk.”

“No, clearly you have that covered all on your own. Consider my restraint a very early birthday present.”

“Just don’t. Please,” Taemin says. “I can’t give him what he deserves.” His thumbnail begins to peel apart the seam of his empty cup.

Jonghyun hums, stirring ice cubes with his straw. “Did Jinki tell you that I wanted you out of the field after what happened in Fukuoka?” He glances up. “I guess not, from the look on your face. So. We should have had this conversation then. But we’re having it now.”

From inside his bag, he draws out two sealed envelopes. The cardstock is heavy cream, like his mother used to send condolences when a patient died.

“You’re going to be thirty,” he says. Gently, like Taemin doesn’t already know. “That’s as good a reason as any to stop and ask what you want from life.”

Taemin breaks the seal of one envelope. He barely feels the sting when he cuts his fingertip. The words on the page make sense individually, but not together, not in that particular order.

“This is a resignation letter,” he says.

Jonghyun nods, and waits for a mother to pass out of earshot with her stroller, too cautious to continue even though they’re speaking Korean.

“This is _my_ resignation letter,” Taemin says. There’s an empty expanse at the bottom, lacking a signature.

“Officially terminating your commission with the NIS.” Jonghyun has an excellent poker face, but his drumming fingers always betray his nerves. “The other one is your acceptance of a post at the consulate here in Manhattan. I made you sound very professional, don’t worry.”

“You want me to quit.” Taemin is still grasping for the punchline.

The corners of Jonghyun’s mouth pinch into a frown. “I want you to be happy. The consulate gig is a front, of course. You’d still be gathering intelligence for us. But you’d be safe.”

Taemin stuffs the letter back into the envelope and refuses to look at the second. There’s a single bright smear of blood left behind.

“I’m good at what I do.” It’s only a pinprick of betrayal, but it burrows deep in his chest. “Better than good.”

Jonghyun fixes him with a stern look. “That doesn’t mean this is the _only_ thing you can do,” he says firmly. “You could have been anything you wanted, Taeminnie. I’m sure your uncle meant well when he recommended you to the agency—”

“I don’t have one of those,” Taemin says, sharp. Static buzzes between his ears.

“Your father’s brother,” Jonghyun frowns. His tapping fingers have gone still.

“I don’t _have_ one of those,” Taemin repeats.

Jonghyun looks wary. “Now may not be the time or the place. I’m sorry. After all these years— I always assumed you would have gone digging.”

Taemin snatches his wrist across the table and bears down too hard. “Tell me.” Jonghyun twists until their fingers are laced together and squeezes. Taemin’s veins feel flooded with ice water.

“Your uncle was the officer who put your name forward for the program,” he says carefully. “He couldn’t say so, of course, but it wasn’t much of a secret. It must have felt like his chance to do right by you. I thought you knew.”

“So you know who my father is.” Taemin hears his own voice from a great distance.

Jonghyun winces. He looks miserable. The name he says belongs to a stranger, but Taemin recognizes it all the same. It’s still emblazoned on a tower in Gangnam. “Taemin, he died. Years ago.”

“I remember. The funeral was on the news.” He was so old, Taemin thinks. The face is elusive, but he remembers the buzz of worry over the stock market when the chairman died. Belatedly, he squeezes Jonghyun’s hand back. “He was married, wasn’t he? Of course he was.” This he’s always known, certainty loud where his mother was silent.

“You have an older brother,” Jonghyun ventures.

“I have four older brothers and you’re all fucking spooks,” Taemin says. “You’re telling me I owe the last ten years of my life to _nepotism_?”

Jonghyun shakes his head. “You deserved every chance you were given. But yes. If you want to look at it that way. Much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, our lives are just chains of accidents.” They’ve been holding hands too long to avoid drawing attention. As one, they sense the lingering stares from inside and withdraw to unruffled composure at opposite sides of the table.

“What about you?” Taemin asks. His voice is rough. “You’re married to the job.”

“Sure, I love it. I play with satellites and supercomputers and everyone bothers Jinki in his fancy office instead of me. I’m exactly where I want to be.” He stacks the envelopes neatly, one on top of the other, and nudges them closer to Taemin. “Are you?”

Taemin swallows past the knot of thorns in his throat. “You’re talking like I can be with him. I can’t. You know what I did. You know.”

“Be specific.” His voice is dangerously mild. “Are you referring to defending yourself? Shut up,” he says when Taemin opens his numb mouth, “that was rhetorical, and you’re going to listen to me now. You came back to us concussed, with a shattered wrist and a dislocated shoulder. I know you wish you could have helped her, and so do I. But it was her choice, not yours.”

Taemin chokes and ducks his head.

“You can’t let yourself hold on to this boy because you’re afraid you could be wrong again,” Jonghyun continues, merciless. “So what’s the verdict? You’ve been watching him all this time. Either you trust him or you don’t. But don’t you dare come back to the agency. That’s over for you. Get some goddamn sunlight. Let my little brother be happy. He’s had a hard run and he deserves it.”

The world tilts briefly on its axis and then rights itself. Sounds reach him distantly, shivering with distortion as if underwater. Tires on wet asphalt, voices overlapping like the murmur of waves. At the windows above, a dancer leans against the glass. Taemin knows him by the slope of his neck, the broad unguarded expanse of his shoulders.

 

 

 

Jetlagged Jonghyun sleeps from late afternoon until dinner, sequestered in the bedroom with a blanket over his head. In the late golden hours Jongin refuses to argue any more and kisses Taemin until his lips buzz instead.

Six days later, eating Jonghyun’s portion of the in-flight dinner somewhere over the Pacific, this is what he remembers. Sitting in the sunbeams on Jongin’s floor and mouthing kisses into his palms, along each fingertip, shaking with something too tender to put into words.

“I didn’t wait three years just to lose you now,” Jongin said that last morning, half crushed into Taemin’s hair while the cab idled at the curb. “Come back, or I’ll come get you myself.” He refused to say goodbye.

Jonghyun shifts in the narrow seat. His blood sugar is probably low and he’s fighting sleep even with Taemin at his side, eyes drooping. “People are just people, for better or worse, you know?” Maybe he’s slipping into a dream. Maybe this a conversation they began years ago finally reaching its conclusion.

Taemin reaches around him and checks his seatbelt. “Yeah. I know.”

 

 

 

The calendars all say it’s spring. Outside, there’s three inches of late snow blanketing the pavement and creeping damp into Taemin’s socks. He jogs up five flights of stairs with his shoes squeaking and his suitcase knocking against his knees. At the door he uses his borrowed keys like a civilian only to find the damn thing is unlocked anyway.

The apartment is dark, but through the blinds the snow throws off a cold white light. Taemin drops his bags soundlessly and stares at the shape of Jongin beneath the sheets. After his held breath begins to burn his lungs, he shakes himself like a dog and marches straight into the shower. The hot water is seeping into him and melting the chill when something crashes in the bedroom.

Jongin trips into the shower in his clothes and bears Taemin back against the tile with a hand cupping his skull. He strokes the freshly shaved sides of his black hair, cut high and tight and respectable like a government worker. Drags his fingertips down Taemin’s cheek to his lips.

"Hi," Taemin says. He doesn't blink.

“Hey," Jongin wavers back. There’s water in his mouth, in his voice.

Taemin stirs to touch his face but Jongin gathers his wrists in one long hand and presses them back above his head. He kisses him with water running into their mouths, kisses him so long the steam builds and Taemin struggles to breathe. Jongin is pouring himself into him like honey. Like he could chase the air in Taemin’s lungs. His shirt, plastered like so much cling film to his skin, rubs up against Taemin’s chest like his tongue would if he could be everywhere Taemin wants him all at once.

Jongin peels out of his sodden clothes and dumps them in a puddle on the bathroom floor. They chafe each other dry between soft towels, stumbling toward the bed. Jongin lays on top of him and traps the damp heat between their skin. His chest is heavy over Taemin’s spine, swelling on every inhale. Until it feels like he’s breathing _for_ Taemin, until he’s arching beneath his weight in a plea for more.

“Five _weeks_ ,” Jongin huffs. His thumbs knead the knots in Taemin’s neck down to his shoulders. Water drips from his hair to Taemin’s back. Slowly he maps him from shoulder to waist, then along each arm, pressing down on the tendons in his palms until he melts. Unhurried, like he’s taking inventory of each scar and ache. Like he isn’t hard against Taemin’s thigh. Where Jongin isn’t sitting across his legs, his skin begins to cool and prickle, only for a hot sweat to bloom when Jongin kisses wetly along the dip of his waist.

“Jongin,” he stops himself from begging. He feels the flats of Jongin's teeth against his skin. “Why— why are there so many plants out there?” At least a dozen new shadows clustered on side tables and sills in the living room, a lush smell of earth and green.

“New security system,” Jongin says, voice gone deep and distracted. “Some paranoid weirdo told me I should be more careful. Good luck breaking in through the window without knocking over one of those.” His teeth graze Taemin’s spine again when he laughs. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that.”

“Your _front door_ was unlocked,” Taemin begins. Then Jongin skims a hand beneath his body to thumb the slick head of his cock and he chokes. He goes slack, cheek falling heavy to the sheets. Over his own shoulder he can see the curve of Jongin's jaw lined in silver. He bites his lip white when Taemin moans.

“Five weeks,” Jongin repeats. Softer now, his forearm grazing a hypersensitive streak down Taemin’s flank as he strokes.

Taemin has an artfully aged passport for one Moon Taemin, stamped with false destinations from an imagined lifetime. He has health insurance and residence forms and a diploma for a degree he never earned. He has an expensive gold-edged wristwatch Kibum shouldn’t have bought him, still in the box. He has all the trappings of a new life that take time to acquire but he can’t explain. All he can do is whine in the back of his throat and beg Jongin to understand.

Jongin kisses the dip of his spine. “I know, I know, it’s been so long. I know what you need." He knocks Taemin's knees wide and drags a palm up the back of his thigh. "Let me take care of you.”

Taemin was good at sex once, he thinks dizzily. He knew his way around. It's only been what, four years since he fucked someone not named Kim Jongin? There are plenty of things he hasn't done for years without losing the knack, like swimming or conjugating Russian verbs. But the universe keeps score, the universe remembers. How he did this to Jongin for the first time on clean white hotel sheets, wrung him out keening and desperate. The universe keeps score, and for once Taemin is happy to pay his debts.

Especially in the form of Jongin eating him out like he has centuries to spare, like his jaw isn’t aching, pausing only to pepper kisses over thin skin while his thumb toys with Taemin’s slick and clenching rim. His tongue laps and delves without warning, stabs of burning heat that Taemin can feel in his chest. When he teases, warm and knowing, the vibration of his voice is almost as sweet as what he's holding back. Then it's back to the pad of his thumb, a rasp that has Taemin's knees shaking as he twists to glare. Unapologetic, Jongin blows him a kiss and then ducks his head and does something so ruthlessly brilliant with his tongue that Taemin bucks and shouts.

“You were so sweet when I met you,” Taemin complains weakly, heaving chest dropping to the sheets. “You used to blush.”

“I still blush,” Jongin says, and bites his thigh. Bites him again, harder, when Taemin opens his mouth. The mattress sinks when he leans his weight onto one knee, rummaging through the contents of the nightstand that he knocked to the floor in his earlier haste.

“Three years, baby,” Jongin says, and the endearment startles a hot silver flare up Taemin’s spine. “You're not gonna last, it's okay. I’ve got you.” Finally he curls two slick fingers inside and flexes them apart and Taemin can only bury his face in the mattress and wail. White heat flares in the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands. Three fingers grind up where he needs them most and Taemin is rutting into the friction of the sheets. Jongin, clearly still a sweet boy despite the slander, licks his palm and gives Taemin the warm cradle of his fingers. And Taemin, who has never been accused of being a sweet boy, clutches that hand and chases the twin flares of need until his stomach swoops and goes bottomless.

He comes with the air punched from his lungs. Jongin hitches a pained, needful sound when he clenches down on his fingers and drags his orgasm out, fucking up harder into him until Taemin is sobbing with only Jongin’s hand on his belly holding him up. Boneless, he lets Jongin ease him onto his back. Jongin is rolling a condom on and he’s too far away. Stretching out his heavy arms, Taemin grasps clumsily at his thighs.

Jongin smiles down at him with heartbreaking fondness. “Look at you,” he says, reverent. “Sometimes I think I dreamed you.”

“That’s supposed to be my line,” Taemin says, breathless. He’s hot and cold all over and aching with emptiness. “Fuck, come here, I need you.”

Jongin groans. “I know. God, don’t I know.” He eases Taemin’s calf up to his shoulder and drops a kiss there, dragging his hips up in the process. Suspended in the air, his body offers no resistance when Jongin sighs like a song and bends him in half. Sinks into him in one hard sleek glide and Taemin sees white.

Jongin feathers kisses up his neck as he adjusts to the stretch. He licks Taemin’s chin where his mouth hangs slack and panting. His arm hooks behind Taemin’s shoulders, and when Taemin clenches experimentally his head drops like a stone to his chest.

Slow, grinding deep circles until Taemin is hard again under his hand. He knocks his heel into Jongin's back and bites his clavicle.

"So good,” Jongin says, ragged. He looks wrecked, with his dark moonless eyes and his elbow trembling to hold his weight. _Keep looking at me like that and you'll make me a king,_ Taemin thinks, _I would conquer worlds for you._ “So good for me, let go, I’ve got you.”

Jongin is giving it to him now with criminal athleticism, and every clap of their bodies meeting rockets up Taemin’s spine. It screws him up into knots and it’s too soon to come, so good he rides the quicksilver edge of pain, but his body obeys anyway, twisting half out of Jongin’s hold with the force of his release.

Time goes fuzzy around the edges. He feels when Jongin finishes, pushing in hard and wringing a weak sound from Taemin’s throat. Can’t remember when he pulls away, but he slips into a sort of waking dream, lucid and aware. He sees Jongin as if with the sun at his back, painted in rose and gold. And then he's beside him again, tucking a towel under Taemin’s damp hair and stroking him clean with a washcloth.

“Everything’s ready,” Jongin says into his mouth. He goes heavy, melting into Taemin’s side and throwing a leg over him. “Half the closet’s empty. The drawers, too. That gross fish jerky you like is in the pantry. You’re signed up for dance classes this summer. Did I mention you’re a non-smoker now?” He sounds drunk, fingertips playing over Taemin’s ribs like piano keys.

“You thought of everything,” Taemin laughs, hoarse. _You really waited,_ he can’t say, but Jongin hears him anyway.

“Everything.” He props his head in a raised hand to watch Taemin’s face. The shadows can’t conceal his wavering grin or his shining eyes. “I promise. You can have everything.”

“I know.” Taemin rises to meet him like the tide, locking arms over his shoulders. Their hearts drum fiercely between their bodies. When their legs tangle in the dark, he can't tell where he ends and Jongin begins.

Inside his suitcase there are four suits and a New York City guidebook Jonghyun selected for their cipher. There’s a tin of pomade for his respectable haircut and a box of nicotine patches, opened. Rolled up inside socks are a pair of rings. Taemin is untroubled by their weight, unafraid of the permanence they imply. He's young and he has all the time in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (title is yet another reference to "work song" by hozier)
> 
> Thank you so, so much to everyone who made it this far with me. Commenters, you are heroes and I love you forever. Prior to these stories, I hadn't written in _two years_ , and working though that drought has been challenging and rewarding. 
> 
> As the ending would suggest, in the back of my head I'm already composing a little nonsense fic set a few years in the future. I'm dying to write in the rest of the Exo members!
> 
> Have feelings? Come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/hyb_jabbers/).


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